The Times Poll : Despite New Laws, U.S. Still a Lure in Mexico

Although most Mexicans believe new U.S. immigration laws have made it more difficult to find work in the United States, more than 4.7 million Mexican citizens believe they are very likely to move north in the next year, according to a Los Angeles Times poll.

It is impossible to know how many will actually emigrate, but according to the poll, 1.3 million would go to California and 800,000 of those would choose to look for work in Los Angeles.

Jorge Bustamante, a Mexican immigration expert and president of Tijuana’s Colegio de la Frontera Norte, said the numbers reflect “wishful thinking” rather than reality.

“You’re talking about attitudes, not real behavior. That may be how many people would go if you assume that it is easy, but not when you know that what it takes to get to the United States is increasingly expensive and difficult,” he said. “A lot of those who say they are going may not make it.”

Bustamante estimates that there are now 1.75 million Mexicans living illegally in the United States, about the same number as last year, before new U.S. immigration reform laws went into effect. But U.S. officials disagree, saying illegal immigration appears to have declined.

A majority of Mexicans believe that the landmark agreement between their government and foreign banks to reduce the foreign debt burden will improve the country’s stagnant economy, the poll found, but they are skeptical that they will feel the effects personally.

Meanwhile, they say, the country has become so impoverished that half of all Mexican children may suffer from hunger. Asked if their friends’ and neighbors’ children have enough to eat, 53% of the respondents said “no” and, among the poor, 69% said the children are sometimes hungry.

More than 1,800 Mexicans were interviewed on a wide range of political and economic issues from Aug. 5-13. Times poll director I. A. Lewis said the nationwide survey has a margin of error of three percentage points in either direction.

Joblessness, Debt Cited

Unemployment and the foreign debt are the top problems facing the country, most of those questioned said. But while President Carlos Salinas de Gortari blames debt and low international oil prices for the nation’s economic ills, most Mexicans blame the crisis on governmental corruption and on the policies of the previous administration of President Miguel de la Madrid.

Salinas was budget and planning secretary in that administration, and during the campaign last year, voters apparently held him responsible for six years of economic stagnation and a 50% drop in real wages. Salinas won with 50.4% of the official vote count in the presidential election, the lowest winning margin for a candidate of the Institutional Revolutionary Party in the six decades that it has ruled.

But Mexicans have ceased to identify Salinas with the last administration, the poll found. Now, three-fourths of those interviewed said they generally approve of his handling of the economy, although they do not agree with all of his policies.

For example, more than half said that Salinas should continue to encourage foreign investment in Mexico, an idea that once was a political taboo in the highly nationalistic country; but two-thirds of all Mexicans object to the government’s sale of state-owned companies. Surprisingly, that number was higher among the wealthy classes who normally tend to support free enterprise.

Sixty-two percent of the wealthy said they are better off today than they were six years ago, whereas 37% of the lower class said they are getting poorer.

Expectations about the economy also vary dramatically between rich and poor. Seventy-three percent of the wealthy expect their financial situation to improve by the end of Salinas’ term in 1994, whereas only 31% of the poor believe that they will be better off.

Economic Escape Valve

The United States remains an economic escape valve. Almost 6% of those responding to the poll said they were “very likely” to take up residence in the United States within the next year. In a country of about 85 million people, that is the equivalent of more than 4.7 million would-be emigrants. Another 16% said they were “fairly” likely to move north within the next year.

Asked where they would go if they had to leave Mexico, 31% of those interviewed pointed north, and the same percentage insisted that they would not abandon Mexico under any circumstances.

Almost a third of those interviewed said they had already visited the United States, and 42% said they have relatives living there. But only 7% said they or someone in their household receives financial support from relatives in the United States.

New U.S. laws that imposed sanctions on the employers of illegal aliens have discouraged illegal immigration, 62% of those interviewed said. Sixty percent said they believed that it is now harder to find work in the United States.

Although 22% of those interviewed said they may take up residence in the United States within the next year, U.S. Border Patrol spokesman Michael Gregg, a supervisor for the San Diego sector, was encouraged by the perception that it is more difficult to find work.

An ‘Economic Push’

“Even though the laws change on this side of the border, there is still an economic push in those countries (such as Mexico), but it’s a beginning. If only one in five want to come, that’s a good deterrent,” he said.

Gregg said that detentions in the San Diego sector, the busiest area along the border, have dropped from a high of 629,656 in fiscal year 1986 to 431,592 last year. He said that 309,000 have been detained this fiscal year, which ends in September.

Gregg noted that part of the drop may be due to the legalization of about 3 million immigrants who now may go back and forth across the border legally.

But Bustamante charges that the Immigration and Naturalization Service tinkered with its figures by stepping up patrols before the immigration legislation was passed by Congress and reducing enforcement since the law went into effect.

‘No Significant Difference’

“They manipulate the number of hours they dedicate to apprehensions. There is no significant difference between the numbers (of illegal immigrants) last year and this year,” Bustamante said.

In the poll, 23% of those who said they were in some degree likely to move to the United States picked California as their destination, and 14% specifically chose Los Angeles.

Those polled said they like the culture (18%), democratic tradition (17%) and equality (12%) in the United States, but above all, they said they like the “economic opportunity” (41%). Sixteen percent said they liked the fact that it is a rich country.

Asked what they dislike about the United States, many responded that the country is “domineering” (24%), “patronizing” (22%) and that there is “discrimination” (38%). But 42% said what they disliked was the extent of the drug problem in their neighbor to the north.

A Nation’s Woes: The View From Mexico The Times Poll on Mexican politics was based on face-to-face interviews with 1,835 Mexican adults. It was conducted Aug.5-13 in 42 randomly selected towns and cities throughout Mexico. It has a margin of error of 3 percentage points in either direction. Around Here, Do Children Get Enough to Eat or Are They Hungry? Enough: 34 Hungry: 53 Don’t know: 13 Most Important Problem Unemployment: 45 Foreign debt: 38 Corruption: 23 Pollution: 21 Inflation: 19 Crime: 10 Population growth: 9 Family breakdown: 2 Public health: 2 Where Would You Prefer to Live in U.S.? Los Angeles: 14 Rest of California: 9 Other border state: 9 Chicago: 4 New York: 4 Washington D.C.: 2 Someplace else: 12 Nowhere in U.S.: 33 Don’t know: 13 Plans To Live in U.S. Next Year Very likely: 6 Fairly likely: 16 Fairly unlikely: 17 Very unlikely: 17 No plans at all: 42 Don’t know: 2 Source: The Times Poll